


Not While I'm Around

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 07:53:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3014306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is seriously injured on a hunt...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not While I'm Around

**Author's Note:**

> This work is subject to editing since I felt the ending got pretty weak on me, but couldn't come up with anything else either.

Sam opened bleary eyes to the rumble of the Impala’s engine and the crunch of her tire’s on gravel coming down the road. He knuckled the sleep out of the corners of them and pulled his knees up under his chin. Dad and Dean had left early that morning on the trail of a Digger in the Minnesota woods a couple of hours north of the little cabin John had procured from a fellow hunter for as long as he planned on keeping them here. It was tiny, only two rooms, with a few pieces of second hand furniture, but it wasn’t drafty which was a step up from lots of places they’d stayed in winters past.

Sam tugged the threadbare quilt he’d pulled out of the linen cupboard closer around his shoulders and peered over the back of the couch at the window, waiting for the Impala’s lights to come into view. He’d been inside all day with the doors and windows locked and salted just like Dean had reminded him to do about a hundred times before he left. He hadn’t put a toe outside the cabin. Dean had been sure he had enough wood for the fire and plenty of food just in case they didn’t make it home by nightfall. 

Dean had been excited to go with John on the hunt, despite his obvious unease in leaving Sam by himself. It had been a while since John had needed his help or had felt like they were anywhere safe enough to leave Sam behind for a little bit. John didn’t let Sam go on hunts yet. Maybe in a couple years he said. Dean had started when he was about fourteen. Sam wasn’t eager for it, but he didn’t like being left alone, and he hated even more the panicky little butterflies that lived in his stomach the whole time Dean was away from him. 

He worried about his brother. Dean was a capable hunter, would be as good as Dad and better very soon, but he was cocky sometimes. It hadn't cost him anything yet, but Sam had witnessed some of the near misses John had in the past, and John was always careful. Almost to a fault. Dean was not nearly so. So, Sam’s worst nightmare was Dean coming home bloody…or dead. Or not coming home at all. 

Light swiped across the walls, and Sam curled his fingers over the couch back, eyes riveted to the door. The Impala’s engine was loud in the open empty space around the cabin, and when it cut out, Sam’s stomach lurched at the sudden silence. It was a silence that weighed too much. He heard one creaking steel door, feet crunching fast on frosty gravel, the other door, a few muffled words from John in a tone that was calm living on top of fear, then the sharp, cutting sound of a stifled outcry. 

Sam’s stomach twisted at the last sound, the sound he knew had come from Dean, and his fingers curled into the scratchy cushions even harder.

Heavy footfalls on the porch, uneven, like John was off balance and weighed down. 

Sam's throat got tight and his tongue filled up his mouth as his father’s voice filtered through the door.

“C’mon, son. I got you. Just a few more steps. I got you.” There was a fumbling at the lock like John was trying to manage it with his arms full, and Sam sprang across the couch back and yanked the door open. 

“Sammy?” John squinted at him, but didn’t spare his youngest more than that. Dean was hanging off John’s side, slung up against him by his father’s strong arm, Dean’s hand fisted in the shoulder of John’s leather coat. “Move, Sam.”

Sam jumped back, letting John move Dean through the door. He shut the door after them, keeping out the growing cold and wind, and scooped the salt line back into place. He shot up off the floor when Dean groaned. 

“Dean?” Sam’s stomach was in his throat. He felt like he was going to throw up. The scent of blood was heavy in the air which meant there was way too much of it, and in the dim light Sam couldn’t see what wounds Dean had or how bad they were, but judging by the way John was hoisting most of Dean’s weight against his side, all the blood was Dean’s.

“Sam, go get me towels, boil some water, and get the medical kit out of my duffle. Now!” John said, his voice sharp and gruff. 

Sam jumped a little at the tone but knew it was only that underlying fear he heard earlier that was causing it. Dad didn’t get scared much. After everything he’d seen, there wasn’t much out there that could make an impact on him, so whatever had happened to Dean had to be bad. It made Sam’s stomach knot harder, and he almost doubled over with the pain, but he had to move. He had to move now because Dean needed him to. So, he scrambled to the kitchenette, putting water on, raiding the bathroom and linen cupboard for every spare towel and shouldering John’s duffle to follow him in to the bedroom to where he was guiding Dean, one slow step at a time.

John eased Dean down onto the bed to a litany of short circuited gasps and swallowed cries on Dean’s part. He still hadn’t turned on the lights and Sam didn’t want to get in the way, so he dropped the duffle and towels inside the door and ran back to check the water.

Sam knew the phrase, ‘a watched pot never boils,’ and he was starting to believe it was rooted in truth as he clung to the handle of the oven door, wringing it in his hands while he listened to his father and Dean in the other room. 

"Let's get this coat off so I can get a better look...Dean? Stay with me, son. Keep your eyes open. That's it, just like that. Come on..." John's voice was coaxing, softer than Sam could ever recall hearing it when he was speaking to Dean. Dean mostly got curt, absent responses, and graveled orders these days. If anyone got any tenderness from John it was Sam, and that was a rare thing. 

"Dad, am I—?” Dean's voice was shot through with agony, every syllable a struggle to get past the gurgle in his throat that Sam was horribly, terribly afraid was blood.

"Shhhhh. Shhh. Shhh," John hushed. "I've got this. You're gonna be fine, Dean. Now, I’ve got to get your shirt off, can you—fuck.”

Sam’s lungs emptied on his father’s succinct curse. John didn’t swear. Not like that. It was Dean’s favorite word and got used frequently, but not John. For John to use that word, things had to be—

“Sam, get in here!”

Sam left the water and bolted into the room. The lights were on now, and he could clearly see what had caused John to swear so harshly.

Dean was laid out on the bed, shirts ripped up the front, saturated in blood. His jacket was on the floor, bloody and shredded. There was a long, deep gash across his chest and another in his side that looked like it wasn't just bleeding but gushing. John’s fingers were pressed into the middle of it.

“Sammy, grab those towels, come over here, and press on this.”

Sam knew he had to move. He had to do it now. His brother’s life might depend on how fast he moved, but it still took a force of will stronger than he could ever remember using before to get his muscles and joints to obey him and grab a stack of towels and come to the bed beside John.

"Sam, fold up that towel and put it over my hands. When I move, you push down, you hear? With everything you've got, okay? Climb up on the bed if you need to, get your weight behind it."

Sam was getting taller by the day, but he was still a skinny waif and barely the weight of a bag of rock salt soaking wet. He bundled up a towel and got up on the bed as carefully as he could so he didn't move the mattress and jar his brother. Dean's face was pale and getting paler. His breathing was quick and shallow and littered with tiny panting moans that stripped at Sam's heart and made his eyes sting. 

He laid the towel and his hands over top of his father’s and when John took a breath, glanced at him and moved his hands, Sam leaned down hard.

Dean cried out, shoulders curling off the bed, one blood-slick hand flailing for something to hold onto and finding the oak head board above him, fingers biting into the wood until his knuckles turned white under the blood. Sam made a defenseless sound in the back of his throat and John must have hear him because he was quick to say,

“Don’t let up, Sam. I know it’s hurting him. It’s gonna hurt him, but you have to keep the pressure on.”

Sam nodded jerkily. Tears were running from the corners of Dean’s eyes and he had his bottom lip set between his teeth to keep from crying out again. Sam felt his own answering tears pushing past his lashes and tried to smear them away on the shoulder of his t-shirt before John could see them.

“Dean…” Sam whispered, just barely audible, but Dean heard him anyway. His green eyes were red and wet and full of pain, but they flicked down to meet Sam’s where he was leaning with all his weight on the wound in his brother’s side, shoulders and arms trembling more with fear than effort.

“’S okay, Sammy,” Dean slurred past the pain. “’M fine. I’ll be…okay.”

He didn’t try to smile, and for that, Sam was grateful. He was sure he would have started bawling if Dean had tried to play this off with one of his cocky lopsided smiles. Instead, he lifted the hand that wasn’t gripping the headboard as far off the mattress as he could, and Sam ducked his head to it, nuzzling against the backs of Dean’s knuckles with his cheek. It came away damp and sticky with Dean’s blood and Sam’s tears.

John was quick and efficient and had the suture kit spread out on the bed and his hands and Dean’s wound dowsed in alcohol in less than a minute. Sam watched in sick amazement as his father got his thick but nimble fingers inside Dean’s wound and started stitching up the leaky artery that was causing such a gush of blood. He wondered absently as he followed John’s steady movements, if his father had seen anything this bad in the corp, or maybe worse, all those years ago; and relief washed through him in a dizzying wave as he realized that, if John had not been in the Marine corp and been trained in triage medicine, if he had not seen all the blood and guts in the war, Dean may very well be laying here dead.

Sam swallowed against the sudden rise of acid in the back of his throat at the thought and bit his tongue against the sob that pushed up behind it. John did not notice how his youngest son’s shoulders shuddered briefly. He had eyes only for the wound in front of him and the flow of blood from it that was finally starting to ebb.

Sam couldn’t keep track of time. He had no idea how long his father worked, or when exactly Dean had blessedly passed out from the pain. He stayed on his knees, straddling one of Dean’s thighs, blood soaked towel in his hands, watching John work and staying utterly silent as tears dripped and slid down his cold cheeks. By the time John had finished with Dean’s side and moved to the seeping gash across his chest, Sam’s feet were asleep under him and his whole body felt numb.

“Sam, get the dressing out of my bag. Get the hot water, and clean Dean up and dress the wound while I finish here.”

Sam nodded and followed his father’s orders. He stumbled a little getting out of the room, pins and needles crawling all the way up to his kneecaps, but he was steady again when he brought the hot water back in a bowl and knelt beside the bed and began ever so carefully wiping away all the blood he could reach from Dean’s pale skin. John finished up the stitching on Dean’s chest and grabbed a washcloth and joined Sam in cleaning off Dean’s chest and shoulders. His strokes were more efficient than his son’s but no less gentle.

When they finally had Dean firmly wrapped and taped and Sam was standing in the middle of the floor with Dean’s bloody, somewhat shredded clothes in his arms, he finally worked his jaw loose to ask,

“Dad, how did it happen?”

John was stripping the blood soaked comforter out from under Dean and exchanging it for clean blankets that he tucked up around his son’s shoulders. “Digger got him in a tight spot,” John said.

“Was he—?” Sam didn’t even want to say it out loud. “I mean, it wasn’t because he did anything…s-stupid?”

John cut Sam a sharp look. “No, Sam. He didn’t. It could have as easily happened to me. Your brother doesn’t do anything stupid. He may take risks and he’s definitely confident, but he is not stupid.”

Sam nodded fervently in agreement and then left the room to bundle what clothes of Dean’s could be salvaged into the laundry and bagged the rest that were ruined beyond repair. John was coming out of the bedroom, stripping out of his leather coat, which Sam had not even noticed he’d never taken off, and running a hand that now shook with exhaustion through his tangled black hair when it occurred to Sam that Dean may not have been the only one to sustain any injuries.

“Are you all right, Dad?”

John looked up with a very tired smile. “Yeah, Sam. I’m fine. I just need a shower and some sleep. It’s been…a long day.”

“Want coffee or anything? Food?”

John ruffled Sam’s hair as he passed by to go into the bathroom. “No, thanks, Sam. I’m good. You clean yourself up and curl up on the couch, huh?”

“No, Dad. You can have the couch. I’ll take the floor. I’ll be plenty warm by the fire.”

John looked at him a little skeptically for a second and then shrugged, too tired to try and divine the look in his son’s eyes that kept sliding toward the bedroom where Dean was passed out. “Okay…okay.” He dropped his hand to Sam’s shoulder and squeezed. “He is going to be all right, Sam. I promise. Why don’t you find the pain meds in my bag and have some ready when he wakes up and can swallow?”

“Yeah, I’ll do that.” Sam scampered off to rummage in John’s duffle still by the bedroom door while John took himself into the bathroom to rinse off the blood and dirt and grime. 

Sam found the bottle, popped the top, doled out a couple of pills and set them on the nightstand with a glass of water in easy reach. Then he went out to the main room and pulled sheets and a blanket from the cupboard and made up the couch so John could crash when he got out of the shower. He put another couple of logs into the hearth and watched to be sure they caught and started to burn well before he bundled up his sleeping bag and the quilt he’d been wrapped in earlier and carried them into the bedroom.

He shook out the stained comforter John had thrown in the corner and stood on tiptoe to shove its edges up against the top of the window, blocking out the light that would come at dawn and more of the cold from the wind picking up outside. 

Dean was pale against the sheets and sweating a little. Sam wished he would wake up so he could give him the pain pills because he was going to hurt really bad in morning if he didn’t. He unfurled his sleeping bag beside the bed and pulled the blanket around his shoulders and settled with his back against the side of the bed. He’d turned out the lights and the only light now was from the fire flickering into the room. He could hear the water still running in the bathroom and closed his eyes to wait until John came out and crashed on the couch before he crawled up beside Dean in the bed. 

John had curtailed their bed sharing a couple of years ago. Or he had tried to, anyway. Sam still found his way up under Dean’s arm at night whenever John was gone or they had a room of their own together. When he was around, Sam was often the first to go to bed, and Dean would wait John out and then slip in and tug Sam close in the dark after their father had dozed off, being sure to climb back into his own bed before John’s alarm went off. 

But Dean was hurt and Sam wasn’t leaving him alone tonight, no matter what John thought about it. Dean had always been there to hold Sam while he shook himself down from the adrenaline rush of a nightmare, or when he was sick and feverish and could hardly sleep, or when John had been particularly gruff with him after an unsatisfactory practice session and Sam needed a shoulder to vent and then cry on. Being with Dean tonight was the very least he would consider doing for his brother. 

“Sam?” John was at the door, his tall, broad shoulders blocking out most of light. His voice was a whisper. “You in here?”

“Yeah, Dad. I’m just gonna sit for a little and see if he wakes up to take his pain meds,” Sam fibbed easily.

John nodded, eyes already fallen to half-mast as his adrenaline started to fail him and drop him deeper down into exhaustion. “Just don’t catch cold sittin’ there on the floor.”

“I won’t, Dad. ‘Night.”

“’Night, Sam.”

Sam tipped his head back against the mattress and watched the shadows from the fire dance across the ceiling. John was puttering in the other room instead of giving in and going to sleep, and after a few minutes Sam could heard the scratch of a pen on paper as he updated his journal on the Digger they’d just taken down. Given Dean’s injuries, there must have been something in his information that wasn’t complete, or John would never have let this happen to his eldest son.

“Sammy…”

Dean’s voice was dry and broken.

“Dean?” Sam whispered, turning in toward the mattress and keeping half an eye on the door where he could see John’s head drooping over his journal.

“Sammy?” Dean’s voice was stronger this time but taking on a frantic quality that sent a sliver of ice down Sam’s spine. He got up on his knees and found Dean’s hand under the blankets.

“Dean. I’m here.”

“Sammy, no!” Dean cried out in a ragged whisper that made Sam’s eyes dart to the door to check if John had heard.

“Dean, it’s okay,” Sam soothed. “I’m here. I’m right here.”

“Sammy…don’t…no!” Dean tried to thrash in the bed, but his wounds caught him up sharply in pain and laid him out groaning against the pillows. 

It was obvious Dean was having some kind of nightmare, and he was going to hurt himself if Sam didn’t do something. He crawled up on the bed, heedless of whatever John might say, and leaned over Dean, so very careful not to put pressure on his stitches and nuzzled his cheek against Dean’s, pressed his nose and mouth into Dean’s throat and breathed there softly,

“I got you, Dean. I got you.”

It was what Dean always told Sam when he was scared, or sick, or hurt, or felt like his twelve year old world was coming to an end over something that was probably insignificant in the run of things. They were three words that equated to ‘I love you’ in Sam’s mind, words that he had heard for as long as he could remember and were as intrinsic to his vocabulary as Dean’s name. 

Dean stilled beneath him, breathing coming easier, throat working under Sam’s lips as he swallowed. “Sammy,” he croaked.

“Yeah.”

Dean’s hands came up and skated along Sam’s ribs, up to his shoulders, over his neck and cradled the back of his head for just a second before he wrapped Sam up in his arms and tugged him down.

“Dean, Dad’s still—your stitches!” Sam whispered loudly as Dean squeezed him so hard he could barely breathe. Sam felt Dean turn his nose into his hair and breathe there for a long few moments, arms never relenting their tight grip.

“Dean, please…” Sam whispered, on the verge of tears. “You’ll hurt yourself worse. Please…”

Dean’s arms instantly loosened, and Sam carefully scrambled off of his brother’s chest to hunch beside him on the bed. “Sorry, kiddo, just—just…”

“You were having a nightmare, weren’t you?”

Dean inhaled and it came out ragged from the pain in his side. “Yeah.”

“Bad?” 

Long pause. “Yeah.”

“About the monster?”

“Yeah…” The confirmation was breathed out in the smallest of whispers. Dean lifted a hand to sift it through Sam’s hair above his ear. His eyes were glittering, damp and bright in the dancing light of the flames from the other room. “Tried to take me away from you, Sammy.”

“But you’re here now,” Sam said in a steady voice. “You’re back with me now.” Sam reached in the dim light smooth Dean’s hair back from his sweaty brow and then picked up the glass and pain meds. “Take these so you can go back to sleep.”

Dean obediently swallowed the pills Sam proffered and, at his little brother’s insistence, managed to sip down half the glass of water. Sam set the glass down and slid back to the floor on his knees, leaning up over the edge of the bed so he could keep hold of Dean’s hand.

“Sammy…” Dean’s voice was hesitant. “Lay with me…please?”

Sam nuzzled his cheek against the back of Dean’s hand, still keeping half an eye to the door and John who was nodding off over his writing. “I will, Dean. Just as soon as Dad’s asleep.”

“Please, Sammy…”

Sam’s eyes throbbed at the raw fear in Dean’s voice. 

It was common knowledge that Dean would deny Sam nothing. If it was within his power to accomplish, obtain, or even steal, Dean would see that Sam had whatever he wanted and everything he needed. Always. It was a power Sam had since the day he’d first opened his eyes and flashed his baby dimples at his older brother. 

The thing that wasn’t common knowledge was that Sam felt exactly the same about Dean. Sam would happily surrender his life, his happiness, everything…down to his very last breath to see that Dean was safe and sound and cared for. His body might still be small and weak, but his heart was big enough and strong enough to fill all the holes in Dean’s life that had been left by so many losses at such an early age. 

Tonight he would fill in all the dark spaces in his brother’s dreams and keep him safe and protected against the nightmares that would make him twitch and moan in his sleep for weeks like he had been doing ever since John had begun taking him out on the hunt. 

Sam pushed his face into his arm to swipe away his tears before they could fall and then crawled back up on the bed and slipped under the blankets, settling carefully against Dean’s side. His brother’s arm came up around his ribs to hold him tightly.

“Shh,” Sam whispered. “Shh. I’m not going anywhere. Always going to be here, Dean. Take good care of you.” Sam littered little kisses all over Dean’s shoulder, every square inch he could reach and tipped his head up to press more against the line of his brother’s jaw. “No more nightmares tonight.”

Dean held Sam tighter and turned his head to bury his nose in Sam’s soft, unruly waves. “Never gonna let the monsters get you, baby boy,” he whispered brokenly. “Never.”

“No, Dean.” Sam soothed a hand over Dean’s bandaged chest, feather-light. “Never. Not while you’re round,” Sam promised. He burrowed his face closer into Dean’s shoulder. “Love you, Dean.”

“Love you, too, Sammy.”

Dean fell back to sleep after a few minutes, and Sam stayed curled against his side, his head resting over his brother’s heart, listening to its slow, steady rhythm. 

It was the first lullaby he could ever remember hearing and the very last he would ever forget.


End file.
